In a campaign full of surprises, one
could argue that the biggest sources of despair (if you are part of the GOP
‘establishment’) and space forSchaudenfreude(if you are a Democrat) is that
the Trump Express is of the Republican’s own making.

Plenty
has been written about the uneasy demographic arrangement that have
delivered routine Republican victories. A good slice of the GOP
coalition profits little (in fact suffers) from
the same longstanding GOP policies that Trump is now assailing – light-touch
financial regulation, free trade, reducing entitlement spending. The top-down
push for immigration reform following the Mitt Romney defeat in 2012 was the
last straw for the grassroots.

This
is why the establishment cry about Trump not being a true conservative
does little for them. Based on their mould, he’s not. And that’s why he’s
winning.

But
if we wade into more wonky matters, things get even more interesting (for
political scientists at least). I’ll mention two things, one that the
Republican Party wish they hadn’t done, and something else that they probably
wish they had.

The
first concerns the reforms to the Republican primary process following the
drawn out contest last time, when one-hit-wonder candidates like Mike Huckabee,
Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum delayed the more-or-less inevitable nomination
of Romney for months. Many argued that this damaged the eventual nominee
unnecessarily.

By
adding in minimum thresholds for delegate allocation in many states, along
with a number of big winner-take-all states like Ohio and Florida, this
year, it is much harder for candidates in the pack to stay close enough to the
front-runner. But what made sense in 2012 is now accelerating the Trump Express
in 2016. This is why Rubio failing to get 20% in a number of states last night
is a big deal.

[Okay
one extra thing: Add to that a number of bizarre decisions on the state level,
like the Colorado GOP’s decision to eliminate its presidential preference poll,
following national changes that no longer forced caucus states to do so. This
means Colorado had no declared winner last night – a big blow to Marco Rubio,
who would have had a good change of winning there.]

Meanwhile,
the second issue concerns one of Hillary Clinton’s best weapons on the
Democratic side, and something that the GOP establishment surely wish they had
at their disposal – a tranche of so-called ‘super delegates’, who are
automatically given a place at the convention and can vote for any candidate
they want (i.e. they are ‘unpledged’).

Here
the parties are very different. The Democratic Party hands out hundreds of
them, just over 700. They are distinguished party members (ex-presidents for a
start), state governors and sitting members of Congress, a number of members of
the Democratic National Committee and party officers at state level. This does
not allow for a coup – super delegates only account for roughly a sixth of the
total, but no, it’s not very small-d democratic. Nevertheless, it allows for
the possibility that the party can negotiate a block vote if things are close
among pledged delegates.

As
my Sanders-loving uncle keeps complaining about, this helps Hillary Clinton a
great deal: most of the super delegates have pledged to vote for her so far. The
score at the moment is Hillary: 457 and Sanders: 22. (Seehere.)
[I bet the Parliamentary Labour Party wishes they had thought of this.]

How
many super-delegates do the Republicans have? Technically, none. Although each
state allocates three seats at the convention (the state party chair and two
Republican National Committee members).

This
is more bad news for Mr Rubio, but makes for interesting political science
debate. Indeed, one of the most fascinating discussions in academic circles
surrounds a recent book,The Party Decides,by Marty Cohen, David Karol, Hans
Noel and John Zaller. They conclude that even with a number of democratic
reforms, political parties in America continue to have tight control over the
nomination process.

I’m posting the publishers blurb below; but after this cycle the authors may
need to write a new chapter.

Throughout the contest for the 2008 Democratic
presidential nomination, politicians and voters alike worried that the
outcome might depend on the preferences of un-elected super delegates. This
concern threw into relief the prevailing notion that—such unusually competitive
cases notwithstanding—people, rather than parties, should and do control
presidential nominations. But for the past several decades, The Party Decides
shows, un-elected insiders in both major parties have effectively selected
candidates long before citizens reached the ballot box.

Tracing the evolution of presidential
nominations since the 1790s, this volume demonstrates how party insiders have
sought since America’s founding to control nominations as a means of getting
what they want from government. Contrary to the common view that the party
reforms of the 1970s gave voters more power, the authors contend that the most
consequential contests remain the candidates’ fights for prominent endorsements
and the support of various interest groups and state party leaders. These
invisible primaries produce front-runners long before most voters start paying
attention, profoundly influencing final election outcomes and investing parties
with far more nominating power than is generally recognized.

About The Author:

Alexander Blake Ewing is a Lecturer at St Catherine's
College, Oxford and a DPhil student in political theory at Oriel College,
Oxford, where he works on the interrelationship between ideology, philosophy
and history.